Is there any good news in the world to write about? Can one even speak of “good news” in the midst of all the daily reports of the wars, terrorist attacks, famines and massacres that are plaguing mankind, as though the skies were caving in or the Day of Judgement was closer than we thought? US journalist Zack Beauchamp has been inspired by a recent UN report to write, “Reading the news, it sometimes feels like the world is falling apart: that everything is going to hell in a handbasket and we're on the verge of a total collapse. In fact, we're living through what is, by objective metrics, the best time in human history. People have never lived longer, better, safer or richer lives than they do now.” What did this new UN report say to occasion such optimism? What is the concrete proof of this unprecedented state of human happiness? Throughout most of history, contrary to what many have tried to lead us to believe, most people's lives were “nasty, brutish and short.” In 1770, which is to say just 250 years ago, and nowhere near the thousands of years of human history or the millennia of man's existence, average global life expectancy was just 29 years old. Today it is 70, a difference of more than 40 years. This helps to account for the enormous change in our concept of “youth”, as well as of “middle age”, not to mention the notorious “mid-life crisis.” The huge leap in the human lifespan occurred because poverty, disease and war were driven back, and because advances in medicine outstripped the powers of witchdoctors who had probably sent more of their patients into the clutches of death than the number of lives they had saved. Watching the news about famines in Africa, one might think that the world was mired in abject poverty. In fact, this was indeed the case for most of human history until the 19th century. It was then, according to UN indexes, that global GDP, the total amount of goods and services produced in the world, began to surge upwards at unprecedented rates. The cause of this boom was the scientific revolution that took us from the age of beasts of burden to the age of the steam engine, from the steam-powered age to that of petroleum fuels, and from oil and gas to nuclear energy. This revolution came in tandem with another revolution, the industrial one, and two other major transformations: the Enlightenment and that mighty engine of economic and social organisation known as capitalism. Nor was this progress restricted to a single continent, region or group, since the products of these revolutions spread throughout the entire world, whether in the form of medicine or electricity. People not only became wealthier, they also became healthier and better able to work. The foregoing account of increased wealth may give the impression that this was the result of the impoverishment of others. That was the view of many socialist philosophers who, like Marx, believed that wealth resulted from the grip that a group of capitalists held on the “surplus value” coming from the productive process. But the figures do not bear out this view, since from 1990 to 2015, which is to say in only a quarter of a century, 1.1 billion people have been lifted out of extreme poverty (defined as living on $1.25 a day). This means, as Beauchamp puts it, that “in just the past 25 years, a full seventh of humanity has been saved from terrible want.” Most of these people live in China and India, which have huge populations but which have also scored such huge rates of economic growth as to drive the word “famine” out of their lexicons. According to the UN report, the number of people living in extreme poverty has declined from 1.9 billion to 836 million in 2015. Most of this poverty is concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. In addition, while it might look as if the scourges of war and violence have been running rampant, the figures indicate the opposite, and there has been a huge drop in the number of deaths from war. In spite of all the conflicts, the terrorism, the global tensions and the wars by proxy and regional wars, there has not been another world war. The only world war that took place between the superpowers was a Cold War. Perhaps this is the reason why deaths from warfare have receded: the strongest countries in the world, with their nuclear arsenals, have developed a deterrent from the recourse to war as an instrument for resolving the disputes between them. As with deaths from war, humankind has also achieved similar progress in the fight against epidemics. Between 2000 and 2014, new cases of HIV infection fell by 40 per cent and the number of deaths from AIDS-related causes fell by 35 per cent. These inroads were the product of medical advances and international cooperation in the field. The same applies to other major diseases. The global measles immunisation campaign saved the lives of around 15.6 million people between 2000 and 2015. During the same period, deaths from malaria declined by 58 per cent, while tuberculosis mortality has fallen by 43 per cent since 1990. This vast improvement in world health, as indicated by the rise in life expectancy rates and the decline in disease-related deaths, stems from several factors. Above all, more and more people are able to obtain food in sufficient quantities. In 1990, 23.3 per cent of the world's population suffered from undernourishment. Today that figure has been nearly halved, to 12.9 per cent. Consider this in conjunction with the huge, 45 per cent, decline in maternal mortality between 1990 and 2013, plus the dramatic decline in child mortality (below the age of five) from 90 deaths out of 1,000 children in 1990 to 42 out of a 1,000 in 2015. On top of all this, all those children who have far better chances of survival also have far greater opportunities to get an education. Even in the poorest region of the world, sub-Saharan Africa, more and more children are going to school. In 1990, only 62 million, or 52 per cent of school-age children, were enrolled in school. By 2012, the figures stood at 149 million or 80 per cent — a huge leap forward. The UN report links the foregoing areas of progress to the spread of democracy in the world, especially since the end of the Cold War. After all, democracy increases the pressures on governments to keep their citizens satisfied and to spread happiness and prosperity in society.
